This week's edition includes expansion of a digital newspaper archive, new and updated FamilySearch records, African immigration to Nova Scotia, classes, seminars and more.

ProQuest, considered the world’s largest digital newspaper archive, is expanding its Historical Newspapers collection. It is accessible for free at most US public libraries.

The newest offerings are historic American Jewish and regional newspapers dating from 1841 and covering Boston, the Ohio Valley and New York City, offering primary resources for researchers.

The papers include The Jewish Advocate (the oldest continuously-circulating Jewish newspaper in the US, a Boston-based weekly) and The American Hebrew/Jewish Messenger (from 1857, covering events before and during the Civil War). Later this year, the Jewish Exponent (1887-1990, Philadelphia) will be added, as well as the Jerusalem Post (1932-1988).

Regional coverage will expand with Newsday (1940-1984, mainly covering Long Island, NY), and the Cincinnati Enquirer (1841-1922, Ohio River Valley)

ProQuestHistorical Newspapers™ began with digital archives of a handful of major American newspapers and has grown to encompass more than 20 dailies from around the world. Collections such as Historical Black Newspapers™ and the growing number of regional papers enable researchers to conduct deep dives on specific topics and also to compare multiple perspectives of the same events. The archive is continually growing and now encompasses more than 30 million pages.

The ProQuest platform allows researchers to share, create and collaborate. Check with your local library to see if it subscribes. I know my library does. For more information, visit ProQuest.com.

Just in time for the collection is a free podcast- available on iTunes - by Lisa Louise Cooke, offered by Family Tree Magazine and focusing on tips for searching old newspapers online, finding historic books on the Web and more. Don’t know what a podcast is? Click here for Lisa's podcast primer.

The first-ever "One Family, Many Faces" festival drew throngs of families to the MyHeritage workshop with 50 computers manned by a team of 15 experts.

This overwhelmingly successful experience in interactive multi-generational family history was attended by families of all backgrounds and ages and took place at the Museum of the Jewish People, September 26-28, in Tel Aviv.

A record-breaking 1,500 family trees - adding some 32,000 individuals - were created at the three-day event. That count is now more than 40,000 because families are continuing to build their trees at full speed.

Parents brought babies, toddlers, young children and teens. Aunts and uncles arrived with nieces and nephews.

Grandparents brought their grandchildren so that they could share in the experience. Young children - to whom computers are an ordinary part of life - helped their non-technological grandparents.

Working side-by-side at computers were young couples just starting their lives together and senior couples recording details for their own parents and grandparents.

MyHeritage is all about uniting families, whether it is discovering new relatives or building a family tree together.